Google notice of unnatural links detected 101

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  • SEO
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Several of my sites along with many of my friends received this message from Google at the weekend:

"Google Webmaster Tools notice of unnatural links detected...please submit your site for reconsideration"

Before I get into the 101 i'd like to address a few myths flying around the forums.

This is not a random email designed to scare people – it’s real and when you receive it all of your rankings drop. In the last 6 months alone I got 122 competitive keywords into the top 5 of Google and now all but a few have lost their ranking entirely.

It's not caused by one source of links - my sites used different link sources and received the penalty.

It has nothing to do with Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics. Google Webmaster Tools is where the message is sent if your site uses it. Some of my panelized sites used Google tools and some didn't - I always diversified risks. Reasoning that because you don't use Google Webmaster Tools you must be safe is just ridiculous.

Since the penalty i’ve being thinking about the way forward. Some of these suggestions are well known and obvious but some may not be:
  1. Don't link build to keywords in sets i.e. don't built links to one or more keywords until the desired position is achieved and then move on. This is not natural.

  2. Built less links. I've been looking at how many links legitimate sites receive and most don't receive that many. Certainly not 1000's in a few months.

  3. Stay away from spun content. If The Best Spinner can auto spin your content then you can be sure Google can unspin your content.

  4. Avoid tools like Magic Submitter, Senuke, AMR, Scrapebox & Xrumer. These tools are designed to create mass links and that's just not natural.

  5. Don't think that blasting second tier links is safe. Just because they’re not pointing directly at your money site doesn't mean Google can't detect this pattern.

  6. Future proof your link building. Shortcut methods that work today may be slapped down tomorrow; it's only a matter of time.

  7. First focus on getting your onsite SEO as good as possible. This is about 10% of successful ranking and you will not be panelized for it. A site with a keyword rich URL, good content and optimized tags will rank effortlessly for most keywords.

  8. Don't just drop links to your site, drop links to authority sites in your niche in the same post.

  9. Make sure you have a clear understanding of what a natural link profile looks like before starting any link building and try to mimic natural.

  10. Sign up to Link Research Tools or similar and monitor your backlink profile.

  11. Don't assume you're clever or safe. One of the greatest downfalls I recognize is arrogance.

  12. Get unique content for your posts. Either hand write it or use iwriter

  13. Dont ping your links - if Google can't find it naturally then you probably don't want Google to find it.

  14. Make your site/content useful and attract legitimate links - fly by night monetized sites with aggressive link building simple don't work long term. The site has to actually be useful.

  15. Try to make your site as white hat as possible and approach any fabricated link building like watering down beer.

  16. Be carefull of blog networks; yes they work but will they work indefinitely? It would be so easy for Google to bust these networks.

  17. Mix in lots of generic anchors. The natural link profiles i see have lots of 'More', Click Here' 'Visit Site' and image links. If you use Link Research Tools and look at natural sites you will see the biggest category of keyword is often 'other'.

  18. Stop trying to find the shortcut. You can be sure of there is a shortcut, it will be sold as a service and Google will eventually discover it.

  19. Practice patience and think if IM and SEO in terms of years. Next year this will make decent money.

  20. Pick your battles wisely. A very competitive keyword requires great link building and may take years to see ROI.

  21. Make sure links are from numerous sources.

  22. Don't over optimize keywords.

  23. Keep the velocity of incoming links manageable and realistic.

  24. Maintain balance between links to inner pages and the home page.

  25. Sign up to Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics - if you're afraid of these tools then you're probably doing something wrong and are afraid of Google finding out.

  26. Make sure a percentage of your traffic is from referrals. A fabricated link profile often generates very little referral traffic. Likewise a natural site has a degree of visits from typing in the URL not just organic rankings.

  27. Make sure your link profile includes nofollow links
#101 #detected #google #links #notice #unnatural
  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Nothing more but speculation. Hardly a 101. You give Google way too much credit.

    I'm neither pro-spam nor against it (before I get flamed to death lol).

    Good effort though.

    edit: just wanted to say that I agree with a lot of your points. Just not in the context of "Google notice of unnatural links... 101".
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    • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
      Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

      just wanted to say that I agree with a lot of your points. Just not in the context of "Google notice of unnatural links... 101".
      This is more my current ideas / views at the moment, in relation to Google's latest penalty, which will change as everything changes.

      I'd appreciate hearing other ideas on technique?
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  • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
    Loads of speculation, but solid points and definitely worth the time taken to read them. However, I do think on-page/site optimization is worth far more than 10%, these days! Too many people neglect this aspect as they are sooo obsessed with backlinks.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Eleva8 View Post

      Loads of speculation, but solid points and definitely worth the time taken to read them. However, I do think on-page/site optimization is worth far more than 10%, these days! Too many people neglect this aspect as they are sooo obsessed with backlinks.
      BINGO!

      That's the exact reason so many fail at SEO, they are so focused on spamming the net with backlinks, they forget about their on-page SEO.

      Anyone that thinks on-page SEO is 10% of the work, isn't even trying to do SEO. Reminds me of the people that think the SERP result numbers are part of SEO competition, lol.
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      • Profile picture of the author fisker
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        BINGO!

        That's the exact reason so many fail at SEO, they are so focused on spamming the net with backlinks, they forget about their on-page SEO.

        Anyone that thinks on-page SEO is 10% of the work, isn't even trying to do SEO. Reminds me of the people that think the SERP result numbers are part of SEO competition, lol.
        can you pls explain this in more detail because i have been lead to believe the same :confused:
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Well, over the last two weeks I took page one rankings with four new sites by simply building really good sites + 30 high PR/Authority blog posts to the home page. Nothing else.

    Less is more at the moment? I don't really know.
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    • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
      Yes i've been thinking about this view recently.

      I know when I start a new site the initial links have a great effect in moving keywords up the serps but as time goes on the power of additional links appears to decrease. There could be many reasons for this which I won’t go into but maybe as you say less is perhaps more.

      If I put my paranoid hat on for a moment say Google gives initial links 70% trust with 100% being reserved for aged trusted sites. As more, similar, links appear for those same keywords perhaps the trust of the incoming links reduces to 40%, 10%, 5% thus the phenomena that more links are needed for the same effect. This is pure theory of course and I’m just discussing ideas. Even with unique content, different IP's etc ,a blog post link can be considered the same as any another blog post link in terms of category of backlink. If the source of the blog post links all demonstrate private Whois details, have no Google products attached to them etc, then it becomes easier to classify these links as similar and possibly devalued in proportion to numbers.

      Another idea is that Google applies additional filters to links where the site incorporates specific on-page factors. For example are there any affiliate links? Is it a drop shipping site? Affiliate marketers appear to be much more abusive of Googles Terms and Conditions than other webmasters.

      Just ideas – anyone else want to chip in?
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      • Profile picture of the author IM Ash
        Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

        Yes i've been thinking about this view recently.

        I know when I start a new site the initial links have a great effect in moving keywords up the serps but as time goes on the power of additional links appears to decrease.
        I've seen many people make a statement of this nature and I have my thoughts on it: a site needs stronger links to climb the ranks because competition becomes tougher the closer you get to the top. So if someone has had amazing result with BMR for instance and all of a sudden there isn't any affect it is simply because the site needs better quality links.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          I've seen a couple of posts now where you say this has nothing to do with Google Webmaster Tools or Analytics.

          You are right, but that has nothing to do with why people recommend not using these. The reason behind their thought process is that if Google finds a problem with one of your sites, which is under the same Analtyics or GWT account as all your other sites, you are giving them a big neon flashing sign saying, "Hey, here are all of my sites. Don't forget to smack these too!"

          I have yet to see someone who got one of these notices and had multiple sites attached to one of these accounts, and only one site got dropped. In each case I have talked to people about, all of their linked sites saw a drop.

          That is why people recommend not using GWT or Analytics.
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          • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            I've seen a couple of posts now where you say this has nothing to do with Google Webmaster Tools or Analytics.

            You are right, but that has nothing to do with why people recommend not using these. The reason behind their thought process is that if Google finds a problem with one of your sites, which is under the same Analtyics or GWT account as all your other sites, you are giving them a big neon flashing sign saying, "Hey, here are all of my sites. Don't forget to smack these too!"

            I have yet to see someone who got one of these notices and had multiple sites attached to one of these accounts, and only one site got dropped. In each case I have talked to people about, all of their linked sites saw a drop.

            That is why people recommend not using GWT or Analytics.
            I have one clean site in my Webmaster tools that has not been effected.
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        • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
          Originally Posted by Eleva8 View Post

          I've seen many people make a statement of this nature and I have my thoughts on it: a site needs stronger links to climb the ranks because competition becomes tougher the closer you get to the top. So if someone has had amazing result with BMR for instance and all of a sudden there isn't any affect it is simply because the site needs better quality links.
          Agreed that's probably the main reason.

          The more I hear about this the more I think there isn't one cause other than as Google puts it 'Unnatural link profile detected'. People are blaming all sorts - BMR, ALN, Link Pushing, etc etc. Even though Google could come down on specific networks my guess is they are more concerned with adapting their algo to identify any site and now link profile that appears to be in contravention of their T&C.

          I think this is big and at the moment it appears that Google just added a comprehensive and heavy handed backlink profile filter to their algo that results in the penalty message and a massive drop in rankings.

          It seems competitors now have the ability to take down their competitors quite easily which is a little bit scary. What would it take, a few fiverr gigs?
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

            It seems competitors now have the ability to take down their competitors quite easily which is a little bit scary. What would it take, a few fiverr gigs?
            Not all competitors only some. If a site is established and has a good link profile before any blast the site will probably survive it quite fine. If the site is ranking BECAUSE of those links you can expect a slap if the site is reviewed. remember Google has all kinds of Data about your site and in particular when it was ranked with some indications of why plus unlike us they can see EVERY link they are counting which no end user tool has ever done.
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            • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
              yes, good point but consider this:

              2 months ago a client asked me to SEO his commercial site which is quite substantial and fairly well know in the UK. The site is 11 years old, has PR 5 and the client told me that no SEO had been done previously other than on page SEO.

              When I checked, the site's content and build was first class and there appeared to be no signs of artificial link building in the link profile.

              Over 2 months I ordered 2 different drip feed link building packages, each running for a month back to back, from private blog networks that are well known on Warrior. The keywords moved to page 1 and it took me all of 10 mins work at a cost of $200.

              This site now has the same penalty notice and all of the rankings have vanished. The site was not linked to my Google Webmaster Tools.

              Ethics aside, is it now more economical in terms of time and money to bowl competitors out of the way as a means of climbing the serps? It could become part of any thorough SEO campaign - Stage 1. Attempt to penalize the competition. I reckon with Scrapebox alone I'd have a good chance of knocking quite a few sites down.
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post


                Over 2 months I ordered 2 different drip feed link building packages, each running for a month back to back, from private blog networks that are well known on Warrior. The keywords moved to page 1 and it took me all of 10 mins work at a cost of $200.

                This site now has the same penalty notice and all of the rankings have vanished. The site was not linked to my Google Webmaster Tools.

                But there is the difference I talked about. the site was not on the first page before the unnatural links. Its going to be nowhere near as easy to drop a site that is established with good links. Just because you can drop some sites doesn't mean that you can drop the good ones.
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                • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
                  Agreed, it should be difficult but it looks like it may be possible for new keywords. What would be the purpose of that? Any penalty notice from Google is a concern whether it affects your ranking keywords or not.
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                  • Profile picture of the author aygabtu
                    Curious, how much link building were you doing compared to the traffic of the sites? If you are building 5000 links in a week for a site that gets 300 visitors a day, it is going to raise a red flag. If your site gets 2000 visitors a day, 5000 links in a week might night throw a red flag.
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                    • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
                      Originally Posted by aygabtu View Post

                      Curious, how much link building were you doing compared to the traffic of the sites? If you are building 5000 links in a week for a site that gets 300 visitors a day, it is going to raise a red flag. If your site gets 2000 visitors a day, 5000 links in a week might night throw a red flag.
                      One of my sites that received the penalty received approx 300 visits a day and made a steady income of more than $5000 a month. I estimate that about 100 links a day were being created to this site but only 50 or so a day were being picked up in various backlink tools.
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              • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

                Over 2 months I ordered 2 different drip feed link building packages, each running for a month back to back, from private blog networks that are well known on Warrior. The keywords moved to page 1 and it took me all of 10 mins work at a cost of $200.

                This site now has the same penalty notice and all of the rankings have vanished. The site was not linked to my Google Webmaster Tools.
                If the package is from the provider I think it is, I'm not surprised.
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                • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                  Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

                  If the package is from the provider I think it is, I'm not surprised.
                  Ummmm..........Nah never mind (but in fairness he said two different providers)
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              • Profile picture of the author cooler1
                Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

                yes, good point but consider this:

                2 months ago a client asked me to SEO his commercial site which is quite substantial and fairly well know in the UK. The site is 11 years old, has PR 5 and the client told me that no SEO had been done previously other than on page SEO.

                When I checked, the site's content and build was first class and there appeared to be no signs of artificial link building in the link profile.

                Over 2 months I ordered 2 different drip feed link building packages, each running for a month back to back, from private blog networks that are well known on Warrior. The keywords moved to page 1 and it took me all of 10 mins work at a cost of $200.

                This site now has the same penalty notice and all of the rankings have vanished. The site was not linked to my Google Webmaster Tools.

                Ethics aside, is it now more economical in terms of time and money to bowl competitors out of the way as a means of climbing the serps? It could become part of any thorough SEO campaign - Stage 1. Attempt to penalize the competition. I reckon with Scrapebox alone I'd have a good chance of knocking quite a few sites down.
                Someone in another thread mentioned the penalty only last about 1 or 2 months so bowling competitors doesn't seem viable. You may as well spend the money going bowling instead.

                Is there really no point in using AMR now then? I've heard that AMR is WH because you aren't paying for links plus the links don't get found all at once anyway.
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                • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                  Originally Posted by cooler1 View Post

                  Someone in another thread mentioned the penalty only last about 1 or 2 months so bowling competitors doesn't seem viable. You may as well spend the money going bowling instead.
                  That someone is just making a statement. there have been more than one member of WF that got the notice and their rankings have not come back in even six months. Does it really make sense that Google catches you with unnatural links writes you and then says okay you can have your ranking back in 4-8 weeks with those same links?
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                  • Profile picture of the author cooler1
                    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                    That someone is just making a statement. there have been more than one member of WF that got the notice and their rankings have not come back in even six months. Does it really make sense that Google catches you with unnatural links writes you and then says okay you can have your ranking back in 4-8 weeks with those same links?
                    No, it doesn't make sense. But on the otherhand it doesn't make sense that big G would hand out penalties for unnatural linking in the first place because then people could just sink their competitors.
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                    • Profile picture of the author Clint Faber
                      Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

                      ..It's not caused by one source ..

                      Some good tips some questionable
                      You say that the penalty comes from not one source chances are they are from a particular source with a combustion of some blackhat onsite SEO but you are unable to specify which one it is because you are using so many strategies.

                      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                      That someone is just making a statement. there have been more than one member of WF that got the notice and their rankings have not come back in even six months. Does it really make sense that Google catches you with unnatural links writes you and then says okay you can have your ranking back in 4-8 weeks with those same links?
                      Yes, you will definitely have to modify and rectify the issue before they give you the opportunity to re-rank your site.

                      Originally Posted by cooler1 View Post

                      No, it doesn't make sense. But on the otherhand it doesn't make sense that big G would hand out penalties for unnatural linking in the first place because then people could just sink their competitors.
                      Typically, the linking strategy that Google normally penalize against our methods that utilize reciprocal links/link exchange where they can directly see that the owner is in fact participating in activities that Google does not like not only off-site link strategies.
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              • Profile picture of the author stephenwaldo
                Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

                yes, good point but consider this:

                2 months ago a client asked me to SEO his commercial site which is quite substantial and fairly well know in the UK. The site is 11 years old, has PR 5 and the client told me that no SEO had been done previously other than on page SEO.

                When I checked, the site's content and build was first class and there appeared to be no signs of artificial link building in the link profile.

                Over 2 months I ordered 2 different drip feed link building packages, each running for a month back to back, from private blog networks that are well known on Warrior. The keywords moved to page 1 and it took me all of 10 mins work at a cost of $200.

                This site now has the same penalty notice and all of the rankings have vanished. The site was not linked to my Google Webmaster Tools.
                Isn't this the exact definition of a red flag? An established domain with a non-existent backlink profile, meaning it's extra important for things to look natural because you have a long history of no promotion, and the first thing you do is 2x 2-month-long drip-fed-links campaigns?

                Seems pretty risky to be doing on a client's site...Has this worked reliably in the past? I mean, I guess I can't blame you as I've done a very similar approach to 2 of my own sites (I don't experiment with clients), but they were both promptly penalized, each separately, and that would've been almost a year ago now.

                Makes it hard for me to believe that this approach has been working for you, but I could always be wrong

                Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

                Ethics aside, is it now more economical in terms of time and money to bowl competitors out of the way as a means of climbing the serps? It could become part of any thorough SEO campaign - Stage 1. Attempt to penalize the competition. I reckon with Scrapebox alone I'd have a good chance of knocking quite a few sites down.
                I actually have considered this line of thinking, and here's my thoughts on it and why this will never be a problem if things continue as they are now:

                The only way for a site to be negatively effected by unnatural link velocity, as opposed to remaining unaffected, is for the site to be either (A) a brand-new website, (B) a website with a near nonexistent back link profile, or (C) both.

                However, the sites that fit this description are rarely ranking in the top 10 before the campaign.

                This means you will only really be able to force-penalize people who aren't going to rank ahead of you anyways, which would imply there be very few scenarios where spending money to penalize another website would be either profitable or logical.

                Again, just my thoughts as I'm certainly not Google, but hopefully that helps in that particular line of thought.
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        • Profile picture of the author jetsetter883
          Originally Posted by IM Ash View Post

          I've seen many people make a statement of this nature and I have my thoughts on it: a site needs stronger links to climb the ranks because competition becomes tougher the closer you get to the top. So if someone has had amazing result with BMR for instance and all of a sudden there isn't any affect it is simply because the site needs better quality links.
          disagreed. BMR will give you strong links, but using only BMR is terrible for link diversity, hence the dropping in ranking if you are only using this one method.
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  • Profile picture of the author looking4adsense
    1. google has no way to find out "referrals" unless you install GA.
    2. google has no way to "unspin" content, it just doesn't work that way.
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    • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
      Originally Posted by looking4adsense View Post

      2. google has no way to "unspin" content, it just doesn't work that way.
      Dude I've tested this. Google does not rank, or index auto spun content as well as unique content.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

        Dude I've tested this. Google does not rank, or index auto spun content as well as unique content.

        Probably not because they unspin it but because it ends up being gibberish
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        • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          Probably not because they unspin it but because it ends up being gibberish
          Definitely auto spun content grammar is a dead give away and it's not inconceivable to think that Google is capable of comparing text down to synonym level.
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          • Profile picture of the author looking4adsense
            Copyscape, a company dedicated to finding these sort of stuff, can't distinguish spun content from the original. I highly doubt google can.

            Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

            Definitely auto spun content grammar is a dead give away and it's not inconceivable to think that Google is capable of comparing text down to synonym level.
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            • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
              Originally Posted by looking4adsense View Post

              Copyscape, a company dedicated to finding these sort of stuff, can't distinguish spun content from the original. I highly doubt google can.
              Bad example. Copyscape is in no way trying to identify if something is spun or not.
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              • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
                Copyscape is often referred to by vendors selling links as reassurance that their content is search engine safe. If Google used Copyscape to check the quality of content then it may be true that anything that passes Copyscape tests passes Google tests but as Mike said Copyscape and the Google algo are not the same.

                Unless links are indistinguishable from natural links then i'd say there is some element of risk either now or in the future. Over the years we've seen Google address every technique used to manipulate their algo - shortcut techniques that work today may not work next year.

                Shortcut SEO will never work because anything that works gets overused and abused resulting in Google eventually taking action.

                Some people believe that Google are partially blind - the reason somethings work is because they haven't got around to dealing with it.

                Early last year everyone was saying it was impossible for backlinks to hurt your rankings and at worst Google would merely devalue the links and now look at the prevention in place - heavy handed penalties with complete drop in rankings as soon as things look 'unnatural'.

                On a side note my guess is that Google is rolling this penalty out gradually - no proof of course, just a gut feeling.
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    • Profile picture of the author against
      Originally Posted by looking4adsense View Post

      2. google has no way to "unspin" content, it just doesn't work that way.
      It may seem hard, but from an algorithmic point of view it's not that hard to "unspin" content, especially for somebody like G.
      There are pretty good algorithms to find percentage of similarity between 2 texts, all it takes is to imply synonyms into the picture (like - are the different words synonyms?).

      This may not work for copyscape, because they have to compare your article to the entire web, but in Google's case - they may try to "unspin" only the articles that link to you. Which is much easier.
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      • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
        Spun content is dangerous in my opinion and with most SEO services using spun content I imagine it's a priority of Google spam team to identify and devalue it. Google spam team have some pretty smart people working there and it wouldn't take much for them to compare content on a synonym level.

        Either SEO services use spun content because they don't care about quality or they have to use it to offer the service at a price the market will accept.

        Either way I stay away from spun content. It's spam junk, has no value at all, and in near future i think Google will develop the algo to devalue it if they haven't already.

        I think part of the problem is many IMers want something quick and cheap and don't care about quality or long term development. It takes patience and commitment to really succeed but in my experience this is the best way to go. You may not see much for the first few months but when your effort starts to pay off the profits are exponential. My last month of income exceeded all other months combined for this year.

        In one IM venture I made nearly $6,000 in a few months using reckless methods that crashed spectacularly over night. Lesson learned - I now build my projects offer value and to last.
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  • Profile picture of the author gearmonkey
    Great advice. I also recommend keyword variation. I also recommend for people to stop building low quality high quantity crap links to their money site and start focusing on high quality authority backlinks.

    Google is changing... so should you.
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    • Profile picture of the author outwest
      Originally Posted by gearmonkey View Post

      Great advice. I also recommend keyword variation. I also recommend for people to stop building low quality high quantity crap links to their money site and start focusing on high quality authority backlinks.

      Google is changing... so should you.
      yes but a combo of crap links,and good links PR0 to PR3,4,5 etc is natural

      only high PR authority links, is not
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  • Profile picture of the author DonHuevos
    I agree with keeping your anchor text natural looking. We were told not to use "click here" and other generic anchor text, but I think you're on to something here.

    Keep in mind, when it comes to SEO, it is a marketing function. If you activity is geared towards meeting the customer at the point of interaction, you'll be fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author bobrichards
    CAN YOU ADDRESS THIS COMMENT:

    Make sure you have a clear understanding of what a natural link profile looks like before starting any link building and try to mimic natural.

    Can you state in detail what a natural link profile looks like?
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by bobrichards View Post


      Can you state in detail what a natural link profile looks like?
      Don't know if anyone can give a complete definition for you but heres a start. on the link occurs in a context that makes sense in content that makes sense AND in a place where the link is not likely to be created by the owner of the site. Examples on unnnatural

      Spun content on politics with a link to how to train your dog or on a page with 50 other links to all other kinds of sites that have no relationship to the content either. As an example of where the link appears that is not likely to be from anyone but the webmaster -

      How many users of a site leave a link to a page they have no ownership of in their forum signature link? or in the name under which they blog comment?
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  • Profile picture of the author mardo
    That is certainly an amazing guide not only for beginners, but for advanced SEO workers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Penalties expire, they always do. Two of my re-penalized sites just came out again, all I did was continue adding content to the site once every three days. And drip feed one high PR blog post daily for a month.

    At this point I'm almost sure that I'm the only one here with actual tracking data to show real results of recovering after a penalty and the rest of the posters are just speculating, lulz. Most probably don't even have sites/sites that have been penalized. That's the different between merely making a statement and talking about actual results.

    Sure, not every site is the same and there are many different penalties, but - even google said this in a video somewhere - penalties expire. Algorithmic penalties either expire or sites bounce back naturally through re-evaluation. Manual penalties expire, unless you've been caught doing real shady **** (and that doesn't include buying SEO packages).

    Does it scare a lot of webmasters away from link building? Sure. That's the whole point.

    If you get a manual quality review (not a penalty) and your site is classed as ****, useless, spam or whatever categories they have for crap sites, then it will never rank again.
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  • Profile picture of the author SirBucksAlot
    Penalties expire, they always do. Two of my re-penalized sites just came out again, all I did was continue adding content to the site once every three days. And drip feed one high PR blog post daily for a month.
    @bnetwork I just got hit with the "unnatural link building message" in WMT. We actually DID drop completely off our page one listing into a black hole somewhere, however we are still being indexed when I run the URL in G. Should we even bother submitting a Reconsideration Request? Or should we ignore this, and just continue with 100% pure white hat practices from now on? Will it come back to life on it's own? Or requires a manual review of reconsideration before it will bounce back? I'd be happy to start making blog posts on-site to promote unique content every few days like you mentioned. On-site, everything else is completely white hat, and well written unique content on a site almost 3 years old. No ad-sense, no crappy outbound links to spam sites, and certainly no link exchanges. We are simply one more example of fellow warrior getting slapped around by G! Apparently it is now very possible to get spammed out of organic search with malicious back-linking schemes. . . and I guess we can now do the same to our competitors? I can't identify which system is causing this, and the reason is because we followed a VERY DIVERSE campaign, which we assumed would cover our a$$e$, but apparently not. Hi PR homepage contextual link networks? Blog posting networks? Articles? Directories? Social link wheels? Wiki posts? We've done it all over the last 18 months. What to do now? And is this something that will pass over time? I can only assume how many pissed off IMers will be taking advantage of this to destroy their competitors rankings as well. If anybody has a suggestion or has gone through the reconsideration process before, please advise. Thanks, -G
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Originally Posted by SirBucksAlot View Post

    @bnetwork I just got hit with the "unnatural link building message" in WMT.
    ^^I don't feel that I'm qualified to give advice in cases like this. All I'm going to say is that every single penalty on my sites has expired over time... I continue to add content and have recently been building high PR links as well (good quality links).

    Ask me in a few days - another domain is due to come back on 15th march and then one more on the 1st of April (lulz). I have loads of high quality sites being used as test targets.


    Originally Posted by yukon View Post

    Reminds me of the people that think the SERP result numbers are part of SEO competition, lol.
    They think that because SEO providers and WSO sellers use those numbers to sell their crap. Mostly.
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    • Profile picture of the author SheraLee
      Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

      All I'm going to say is that every single penalty on my sites has expired over time... I continue to add content and have recently been building high PR links as well (good quality links).

      Ask me in a few days - another domain is due to come back on 15th march and then one more on the 1st of April (lulz). I have loads of high quality sites being used as test targets.
      bnetwork, about how long did your penalties last and how do you know the date of expiry, such as 15th March and 1st April; does Google tell you this, or you just know the time frame from past experience? Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author SirBucksAlot
    @bnetwork - Thanks! As soon as I'm able to PM, I have something to show you which might help the cause. For now, I am going to wait on the reconsideration request. I'll go ahead and start posting some good content on the blog section, and see what happens over the coming days.
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  • Profile picture of the author vuedoolor
    for those that has had a penalty:

    how was your link velocity?

    how many links per month as compare to your competitors in the top spots. Was it over kill?

    were your backlinks pointing to more than one url? for example 1 link to your money page one link to your tier 2 or could just be one link to tier 2, one link to tier 3 which all basically leads to your money page (interlinking) . Or did your backlinks all had only one link pointing either to your money page or tier X ( no interlinking ) but still leads to money page.

    Excessively trying or forcing Google to index your links?

    Just want to see if we can pinpoint what all these penalized sites have in common.
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  • Profile picture of the author radivoj
    I want to point out one very important thing, most of the sites that got penalized by Google including few my sites as well are mostly sites that giving access to Google for all of your site data, every time when you install Google site map or Google analytic or Google webmaster account Google will always tracking down all your site details and have detailed reports about your site traffic behavior,content visitation, funnel information,crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks and much, much more, that's the way they penalized your site for "unnatural links" same thing happen to me...Don't ever give to Google any date about your site...
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve25
      Originally Posted by radivoj View Post

      I want to point out one very important thing, most of the sites that got penalized by Google including few my sites as well are mostly sites that giving access to Google for all of your site data, every time when you install Google site map or Google analytic or Google webmaster account Google will always tracking down all your site details and have detailed reports about your site traffic behavior,content visitation, funnel information,crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks and much, much more, that's the way they penalized your site for "unnatural links" same thing happen to me...Don't ever give to Google any date about your site...
      I'm not normally much of a conspiracy theorist and where I don't agree with webmaster account (they already have this information and are giving it back to you) I am beginning to see the argument towards analytics. With GA account you are letting Google into your most intimate secrets, if a competitor asked to see your stats you'd laugh at them and yet we gladly hand them over to Google.

      I'm currently testing Piwik and hopefully by the end of the month will be able to move all my sites away from GA.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    Good guide for beginners. Are there speculations? Sure but still a decent guide. Not sure this thread should be muddied by people who always want to be right.

    Also, I never understand the people who underestimate Google. If they wanted to take over your life and steal your wife I bet they could lol. Example of the nonsense is poster above suggesting that copyscape can't detect spun content therefore Google can't. Strawman if I ever seen one.

    Gj op. Critical thinking will keep your mind Sharp.
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    • Profile picture of the author opensky
      Hi there,
      Our site has existed for 5 years, has sitelinks and what I thought was a diverse link profile. No paid links, exchanges, but some spammy looking backlinks based on what ive just uncovered. We received the unnatural links warning 2 days ago, and have not found any change at all in rankings or traffic. I have no idea who built some of the spammy links. What would you all suggest, based on experience, that we do (if anything, aside from being more considered with link building from now on)? Has anyone had this experience yet and not had a change in rankings, or is it ALWAYS 'a matter of time'?

      James
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      • Profile picture of the author Architex
        I got the love letter 2 weeks ago. Some of my KW dropped off the map but others are doing OK. My overall traffic dropped around 25-30% and seems to have stabilized. Of course I used BMR and I am pretty sure that is why I got the notice. So now that the links are gone I will see what happens to my rankings and how long they take to come back. I will keep adding quality links slowly over time.
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        Architex
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        • Profile picture of the author opensky
          I see...and how quickly did your rankings from fall after the date of your letter? Hard to ascertain if you got a penalty or just a link devaluation given some KWs were unaffected.
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    And indeed, I wonder if anyone who has received one of these love letters remained unaffected.
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    • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
      I've noticed on some of my sites that received the dreaded unnatural links message that some keywords with natural links have held their rankings. This makes me think that links are devalued as apposed to and all out penalty on the site.

      This is still unfolding to be honest and opinions change form day to day but at the moment I think the message is partially a scare tactic that appears as a total penalty but is more a case of spam links being devalued which has been the case for some time. The difference here is that google is devaluing many more links and sending out penalty mesages. Combined with most of the big PBN's being de-indexed would account for so many lost rankings.

      It would would be interesting is to test if a site with the google love letter can rank a new keyword, this would indicate whether it's a total penalty or just specif keywords / davalued links?
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    Hope you're right, that this is only link devaluation. Aside from trying to remove some spammy looking social bookmarking links and spun articles with repetitious anchor text that I didn't even post myself, I don't know what else to do. Hopefully rankings won;t drop at all but who knows lol
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  • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
    Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

    It would would be interesting is to test if a site with the google love letter can rank a new keyword, this would indicate whether it's a total penalty or just specif keywords / davalued links?

    ^^ yeah that's a good idea.

    Funny one of my sites got hit with a -100 about 2 months ago, recovered to mid 20's then got hit again with a -50 god damn it! Received 2 unnatural link notices for this site, really now... I haven't built a single backlink to it in over 2 months now.

    My other sites have mostly recovered: one keyword is #18 and another one is at #3 now (higher than previously). Took a long time, over 1.5 months now and still not fully back to where it was before (#6 and #5 for those two keywords).

    My sites all get hit site-wide. All inner pages and the homepage. All keywords (I track 10-20 homepage keywords and maybe 10 inner pages for 1-2 keywords each).

    I've moved on to new projects and just letting these sites recover slowly. If it takes another six months to get back on page one, so be it.
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    • Profile picture of the author cssitkt
      bnetwork - you must have received more penalties than anyone on this forum! lol

      Good to see the sites recovering with time. Actually i noticed that one of my sites that received the google love letter is creeping back up the serps on all keywords, nothing amazing but a definite improvement in rankings.

      Maybe the penalties / messages / devaluing have an element of 'slap' to them i.e. you've been dealt a blow but it's not permanent damage?
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      • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
        Originally Posted by cssitkt View Post

        bnetwork - you must have received more penalties than anyone on this forum! lol

        Good to see the sites recovering with time. Actually i noticed that one of my sites that received the google love letter is creeping back up the serps on all keywords, nothing amazing but a definite improvement in rankings.

        Maybe the penalties / messages / devaluing have an element of 'slap' to them i.e. you've been dealt a blow but it's not permanent damage?
        I think they're constantly being re-evaluated by an algorithm and as link sources get de-indexed the penalty gets smaller and smaller. Something like that. At least it looks that way.

        I have filed some reconsideration requests to see what happens - in most cases they replied within 3-4 days (pretty fast) and told me that they still see links that are used to manipulate PR or something similar and that my site's backlinks don't meet their quality guidelines.

        It all seems to be about high PR backlinks. My other site with over 27k indexed social bookmarking links has no problems in SERPs (most of those links are no-follow but the site does rank pretty well).

        I do have a whole bunch of websites, lol. Some are mostly used for testing purposes and I don't invest a lot into those sites, so no big deal. A couple good sites got hit, but that was my bad using ALN (one small blast to each site) on them - bad idea.

        I've decided not to panic and just continue working on my other sites in the meantime. It sucks because I lost like half of my monthly income because of those two sites that got hit, but meh.

        Some good things happened this month as well - landed 3 amazing aged and niche specific domains (.com's and all) in a niche I know very well - all three are in top 3 now for target keywords (6k exact matches, high CPC).

        Just another month doing SEO and making monies...
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        • Profile picture of the author FuriousStyles
          Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

          I think they're constantly being re-evaluated by an algorithm and as link sources get de-indexed the penalty gets smaller and smaller. Something like that. At least it looks that way.
          I have to say that I am personally coming around to this idea. I am starting to believe that all penalties are purely algorythmic and not a manual penalty. Although purely specualtion (before I get called out on that) there are a number of reasons for me thinking this.

          1. Too many messages sent at once; an algorythmic filter makes much more sense.
          2. Varying degrees of reported penalties / link devaluation.
          3. Many reconsideration requests receiving an automated reply - in this video (around the 6.00 mark Matt Cutts states that not all requests are dealt with manually - some just checked by the algorythim) Live Q&A September 21, 2011 - YouTube
          4. The announcement of an over optimization penalty (probably algorythmic & fitting to what we have seen)

          I am only 10 days in with no change (still number 1), and I am not totally ruling out a penalty - I just dont see evidence from what I have read that there is one.

          My personal strategy is to delete bad links that I can control and wait for the algorythim to catch up, then see where I land.
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  • Profile picture of the author Casino Hire
    I agree in the most part, but this would be a very cautious way of approaching SEO if you followed all of them. Also .. a lot of top ranked sites have 1000's of links, many from one site .. so it isn't all true. Black hat techniques seem to work in the long term for some sites Especially around the camping market ( I have been looking into this recently)
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  • Profile picture of the author Stizerg
    I received the love message from bigG 10 days ago. I see no changes in traffic and rankings, some keywords still #1. Actually I even didn't know about that message until today. Will see what's happens next.
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  • Profile picture of the author vanished
    "cssitkt" you are absoulutely right. In todays SEO, there`s no shortcut for ranking. Spun content does not work anymore as it does 2 years ago. SEO is a long-term process AND as long as you do it manually, you`ll be fine!

    Unfortunetly, many people still don`t understand this. They`re trying to find a shortcut, building thousands of crappy links and ruin the whole nature of SEO.

    Regards,
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    • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
      Originally Posted by vanished View Post

      Unfortunetly, many people still don`t understand this. They`re trying to find a shortcut, building thousands of crappy links and ruin the whole nature of SEO.
      They're not ruining "the nature of SEO". All they're doing is ruining their own sites/income sources when **** goes wrong. For some, it's a calculated risk. Others are just plain dumb...

      You can rank really fast with "white-hat" SEO. Still - a competitor can send a blast from one of these crap networks (ALN) to your site and you're done. Good luck removing the links - there's no way to do it. You gotta wait it out.
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      • Profile picture of the author hicksdelight
        Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post


        You can rank really fast with "white-hat" SEO. Still - a competitor can send a blast from one of these crap networks (ALN) to your site and you're done. Good luck removing the links - there's no way to do it. You gotta wait it out.
        It's so worrying really, Google have got to find some middle ground as right now it's a mess.
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    Indeed, it is curious how varied everyone's experience has been since receiving these notices. A year ago I found a heap of spammy links pointing to my site from foreign porn sites, like over 1000. It took me ages to get some removed. The seo co I had retained at the time denied any involvement and I promptly fired them as a security measure. A day later they posted a fake negative review on my google places account from one of their own customer's accounts. I wonder if it was these links which caused the love letter to arise, but then again it's highly unlikely that they would have passed any pagerank anyway. It's quite mysterious, and naturally, G won't tell us anything specific but that makes it even more frustrating.
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  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    @cssitkt, what happened to your Backlink Bomb/Negative SEO study?

    Please tell me it was not removed...and if it was...any idea why? Did the website in question continue to drop for those targeted keywords?

    Thanks in advance!
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    • Profile picture of the author opensky
      Given everyone seems to have varied timeframes and experiences post receiving these letters, I wonder if it's initially algo triggered, but then manually reviewed. So a matter of time until someone in G determines if a penalty, link devaluation or nothing is to ensue. Cant think of any other explanation. Still, waiting/hoping to hear if someone has received a letter and had no change indefinitely since.lol
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    • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
      Originally Posted by jsherloc View Post

      @cssitkt, what happened to your Backlink Bomb/Negative SEO study?

      Please tell me it was not removed...and if it was...any idea why? Did the website in question continue to drop for those targeted keywords?

      Thanks in advance!
      I the backlink bomb experiment was deleted by the mods because it contained clear instructions on how to harm your competition with unnatural backlinks. I just checked the rankings for the experiment and 2 keywords out of 3 are completely tanked. The only keyword that stayed on page one is an exact domain name match and is long tail. There's some good data there in that the penalty forced was not an all out penalty on the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    Still no change in rankings after 10 days. Im doing what i can to get rid of spammy links, which i never caused to have posted anyway. What's the latest view of these messages? Are they definite impending penalties or just warning messages for some sites?
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  • Profile picture of the author jsherloc
    Posted this relevant response in the Negative SEO thread:

    http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...ml#post5997344

    @scottmacair, lol that is kind of what I figured would happen. I really think that specific type of censorship would indicate to most intelligent people that there probably REALLY is an issue over at the GooglePlex. If it was just some one time thing or coincidence or whatever, why are all the IM forums starting to censor these case studies? Why censor something that isn't going to potentially be a MASSIVE problem for people in this industry going forward?

    I read on a few forums that they shut down these types of Negative SEO threads because it encourages completely unethical behavior instead of productively working on your own web properties, which I agree with. But, when you have potential new evidence constantly staring you down, eventually what others called "whining to Google" really becomes the only avenue for a large grouop of people to potentially accomplish something productive.

    I don't know how long other folks have been in this industry, but Google doesn't really often make many major moves unless they get major negative feedback and press coming from different connected avenues, kind of like any other giant company. Telling the entire eco-system of IMers (on all different financial and knowlledge wavelengths) that whining is going to do them no good is counter-productive in my experiences dealing with giant corporations.

    They know there is a problem, they read all these boards, complaints from publishers that made them six figures year after year, so are they going to address this specific negative SEO issue you guys think? I doubt it lol...but it certainly can't hurt to keep reminding the general public that there is potentially a major problem at hand...
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    • Profile picture of the author opensky
      I'm sure you are right, and it's a shame that google are opening a can of worms. But surely if competitors or their seo firms are engaging is such malicious practices the legal ramifications will be massive? Assuming, of course, one has adequate proof. On a different but kind of similar thread, Ive seen an seo company post fake negative reviews on sites of their customer's competitors.. it's actually so easy to spot.
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  • Profile picture of the author csophie
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
      Backlinks harming sites is possible and only those in deep denial or those who risk losing SEO customers deny it.

      Deleting the threads that prove it isn't the answer either - this fact is out there and people will do it whether forums delete the threads or not.

      I think it's only a matter of time before we see a high profile litigation case hit the headlines.
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    Agree scottmacair. How to prove who built spammy links is another story, though. Now then, if someone could develop some kind of software and service to somehow track who was building backlinks imagine the future business opportunities if google keeps up this method.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bond Girl
    This was a good educational read, thanks for sharing everyone. Great lessons to learn from.
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  • Profile picture of the author fortony
    When you really think about it, are all these attempts to build links worth it? They never give much more than a temporary boost in my experience anyway.

    I think you need to do some link building, but it should always take a back site to building up your content.
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    • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
      Originally Posted by fortony View Post

      When you really think about it, are all these attempts to build links worth it? They never give much more than a temporary boost in my experience anyway.

      I think you need to do some link building, but it should always take a back site to building up your content.
      Great comment and spot on advice. This is totally my experience
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      • Profile picture of the author robftprod
        Just wanted to chime in with another thought....

        What if Google is sending out these notices to see IF you are manipulating your link building.
        For example: you get the dreaded email and 30 days later all the "offending" links are removed. Or, you are using paid backlinking services and you STOP completely.

        Google comes back in 30-60 days and sees your changes and says, "See, you just proved you were buying links, or trying to manipulate linking"

        I'm not saying that's what they are doing, but it would be brilliant if they did that. They would simply watch our reactions to their notice, and really slap anyone that changes everything.

        Might be the one time it's best to not change anything for a few months?

        Just my 2 cents
        Rob
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    Seems everyone's reporting different findings. I got the warning nearly 3 weeks ago and no changes until now. I have about 30 URLs and only one page for an important keyword has dropped suddenly from page 2 to page 6. Is this definitely a penalty? Doesnt seem to be site-wide. Are penalties sometimes page specific or always over the whole domain? Not yet anyway. We've done no dodgy link building ourselves and therefore have not tried to remove any links, we just got on with things as usual. Any ideas?
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  • Profile picture of the author opensky
    Cool. That's what I'm seeing. I mean, since this evening I've actually seem more drops in other pages and KWs but some are still number one. Hopefully it's not pointless continuing link building now if indeed we have a penalty.
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